Actually given past experiences that is exactly what Tagon would do. In fact if things look like they're getting too hot he would probably use his breachers to blow a hole and escape. He actually implied he would do that in this comic.

The Daggermother is no longer his client. She terminated the Toughs contract. And he does not fight when he is not getting paid to (Unless something like the galaxy is on the line, and usually he still ensures he gets paid somehow). Of course given past experiences he's also likely to offer the Daggermother his services at a marked up rate.

The important thing to note is that he's a career mercenary. He'll take a whole lot of risks for money, but he won't budge an inch for free.

CDRE Tagon then said enough that she never actually pushed the exit button and instead requested immediate help. It's possible her orders to leave terminated Kaff's inclusion into the contract, but I doubt it. The Tough's are still under contract and the Dgrmtr Venombrook will very likely be requesting further boots... probably even boats.

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He'll take a whole lot of risks for money, but he won't budge an inch for free.

Granted... it was highly likely Gavcorp would cough up payment, even if Massey couldn't get them out of default. The Gavs strike me as the sort to pay their debts. And Danita would have ripped 'em a new if they didn't. And she can now do that!

Side note. Never did understand why Danita didn't get herself remade. I guess being able to rip tanks open with your bare hands is useful... but... still...

Side note. Never did understand why Danita didn't get herself remade. I guess being able to rip tanks open with your bare hands is useful... but... still...

A certain willingness for body modification would obviously be a requirement for her pass through the Can. From there, a scientist might go for a useful body (who needs hazmat suits or heavy lifting equipment?) over a beautiful one when the opportunity already presents itself.

Side note. Never did understand why Danita didn't get herself remade. I guess being able to rip tanks open with your bare hands is useful... but... still...

She was probably informed by Ambassador Gav that the Can that transformed her body and gave her new memories and personality was also used to make her believe she was happy with the changes as part of the procedure.

The same procedure was probably the infection vector for almost becoming a Kowalski murder bot. If I were her I'd probably be put off with any more tampering than necessary to make the Kowalski parts quiescent.

Actually given past experiences that is exactly what Tagon would do. In fact if things look like they're getting too hot he would probably use his breachers to blow a hole and escape. He actually implied he would do that in this comic.

The Daggermother is no longer his client. She terminated the Toughs contract. And he does not fight when he is not getting paid to (Unless something like the galaxy is on the line, and usually he still ensures he gets paid somehow). Of course given past experiences he's also likely to offer the Daggermother his services at a marked up rate.

The important thing to note is that he's a career mercenary. He'll take a whole lot of risks for money, but he won't budge an inch for free.

It's hard to get paid when your clients are dead, you are dead or both. Galaxy destroying events are type "both", with extreme prejudice. Because of that, when entire galaxy is at stake, some pro publico bono work is unavoidable, and best you can do is to try to figure out to be paid after the fact.

I doubt the hack would have worked on a normal Gav without blood nannies. The can is what allowed for a transformation to occur to start with along with be backed up into one's skin, but opened the door for those same blood nannies to be hacked.

Frankly since the Osiri Gavs were running off a form of RED similar to that on Haven Hive, I assumed it was all a USN scheme to see what they could do with their tech. We don't even know if the original Doctor Asa was even a Gav to begin with, or just someone grabbed off the street, brain turned to mush and the belief that they were a Gav transformed into a different thing taped onto a doctorate put in the shell that had once been a person.

I doubt the hack would have worked on a normal Gav without blood nannies. The can is what allowed for a transformation to occur to start with along with be backed up into one's skin, but opened the door for those same blood nannies to be hacked.

Frankly since the Osiri Gavs were running off a form of RED similar to that on Haven Hive, I assumed it was all a USN scheme to see what they could do with their tech. We don't even know if the original Doctor Asa was even a Gav to begin with, or just someone grabbed off the street, brain turned to mush and the belief that they were a Gav transformed into a different thing taped onto a doctorate put in the shell that had once been a person.

There were an awful lot of Gavs, some even ended up working for IntAffInt. No reason to think that Dr Asa wasn't a Gav. Whether she knew about the backdoor is a more likely question.

CDRE Tagon then said enough that she never actually pushed the exit button and instead requested immediate help. It's possible her orders to leave terminated Kaff's inclusion into the contract, but I doubt it. The Tough's are still under contract and the Dgrmtr Venombrook will very likely be requesting further boots... probably even boats.

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He'll take a whole lot of risks for money, but he won't budge an inch for free.

Granted... it was highly likely Gavcorp would cough up payment, even if Massey couldn't get them out of default. The Gavs strike me as the sort to pay their debts. And Danita would have ripped 'em a new if they didn't. And she can now do that!

Side note. Never did understand why Danita didn't get herself remade. I guess being able to rip tanks open with your bare hands is useful... but... still...

I read that "No more money for you." at the end of her speech as her actually terminating the contract. The fact that Tagon Sr. sent the report anyway was not because she didn't terminate it, but because he thought it was too important not too. Whether the Toughs and Urtheep actually have a contract or not at the moment is debatable. Things moved immediately to the opening stages of the Allstar assault. We probably won't get a definitive answer until this book wraps up. I expect they'll regard that verbal cancellation as never happening unless things go very wrong.

As for the Osiris incident it's true that they were technically in default at that point, but Tagon didn't know that when he was preparing the operation. And while he probably would have done it anyway he did assign his best, only, legal officer to ensuring that they did in fact end up getting paid. Also Tagon had spent time meeting with and getting to know the Gavs. He seemed to like them.

On the other hand the Daggermother has annoyed him and he seemed eager to leave. I mean I don't expect the Toughs not to get involved in this. Story wise it would make no sense for them to just leave at this point. Especially now that they're all armed. And they did think it was important enough to respond to to not just drop the contract once they learned what the Allstar was. On the other hand I kind of expect Tagon Jr. to grill the Daggermother a bit for more cash.

Tagon is heroic and does do the noble thing pretty all the time it occurs to him. But his other notable character trait is making sure he gets paid well for his heroics. That might change now that's immensely rich and relatively immortal, but on the other hand it might not.

Edit: Well guess not. I suppose an active combat situation is no place for monetary negotiations.

A certain willingness for body modification would obviously be a requirement for her pass through the Can.

I'm leaning more on a certain willingness to no longer be a Gav.

Keep in mind, while the Gavbassador remembers everything not as "boring or depressing", he's the Gavbassador. he's got a job doing something different. All the Gavs that went into the can were bored and depressed. Everything they knew how to do was redundant, and redundant because of themselves and that they were who they were because the things they liked that were shared by a significant percentage of humanity (who all happened to be blue-haired scientist cryo-cast-aways).

Now, I'll grant they also needed a certain willingness to body-mod, otherwise they'd have never gotten into the Can at all.

Reaver225 wrote:

The same procedure was probably the infection vector for almost becoming a Kowalski murder bot.

RED was the vector. While the Can probably gave them perma-RED... the Can wasn't exactly the vector of the Kowalskinfection.

JohnSmith wrote:

There were an awful lot of Gavs, some even ended up working for IntAffInt. No reason to think that Dr Asa wasn't a Gav. Whether she knew about the backdoor is a more likely question.

If Dr Asa knew about RED"s backdoor she did a crap job of protecting it. No, she probably didn't know. If she had she'd have had Binnie kept away from anyone who could have recognized he was changing.

Arcanestomper wrote:

I read that "No more money for you." at the end of her speech as her actually terminating the contract.

If the contract really were terminated the Toughs would not have ported in and assisted. Sure, Karl isn't a pure merc, but he's operating under a merc company now, he damned sure isn't going to send troops into harm's way without pay when he has no pressing need to do so.

Unless this is was a shrewd "get Tough's on the ground and wait until we can get the data ourselves" plan... but that's very piratical, not so much mercenary.

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The fact that Tagon Sr. sent the report anyway was not because she didn't terminate it, but because he thought it was too important not too.

Yes, that is true. He also knew it would keep Dgrmthr Venombrook from pushing the exit clause on the contract. They've already done a bunch of work, they might as well get all the pay.

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Whether the Toughs and Urtheep actually have a contract or not at the moment is debatable. Things moved immediately to the opening stages of the Allstar assault.

Which the Tough's would not have ported into without being paid. If they weren't under contract, they'd have no reason to assist. No, it's more likely it's exactly what I posit, the exit clause was never used, Ezraene was talked into not pushing and when she asked for assistance it was under contract.

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We probably won't get a definitive answer until this book wraps up. I expect they'll regard that verbal cancellation...

Again, she never once said "The contract is terminated" or even any definitive language to that effect. She was speaking of what she could do and what would happen. She was fishing and what she hooked was bigger than she expected.

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As for the Osiris incident it's true that they were technically in default at that point, but Tagon didn't know that when he was preparing the operation.

By the way, going from today's comic, it seems that Urtheep's systems are indeed subverted. Tagon can communicate with Cindy (okay, it could technically be just a microphone on the ship's hull, but I assume standard radio/hypernet/whatever comms), so Daggermother's comms are not just being jammed in a conventional flood-everything-with-noise way.

By the way, going from today's comic, it seems that Urtheep's systems are indeed subverted. Tagon can communicate with Cindy (okay, it could technically be just a microphone on the ship's hull, but I assume standard radio/hypernet/whatever comms), so Daggermother's comms are not just being jammed in a conventional flood-everything-with-noise way.

Actually given past experiences that is exactly what Tagon would do. In fact if things look like they're getting too hot he would probably use his breachers to blow a hole and escape. He actually implied he would do that in this comic.

The Daggermother is no longer his client. She terminated the Toughs contract. And he does not fight when he is not getting paid to (Unless something like the galaxy is on the line, and usually he still ensures he gets paid somehow). Of course given past experiences he's also likely to offer the Daggermother his services at a marked up rate.

The important thing to note is that he's a career [i]mercenary. He'll take a whole lot of risks for money, but he won't budge an inch for free.

It's hard to get paid when your clients are dead, you are dead or both. Galaxy destroying events are type "both", with extreme prejudice. Because of that, when entire galaxy is at stake, some pro publico bono work is unavoidable, and best you can do is to try to figure out to be paid after the fact.

To quote a fairly recent movie:Rocket Raccoon: Why would you want to save the galaxy?Peter Quill: Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in it!

I read that "No more money for you." at the end of her speech as her actually terminating the contract.

If that counts as terminating the contract, then I guess asking the Toughs to teraport troops in counts as re-hiring them.

Arcanestomper wrote:

As for the Osiris incident

Please. Osiris is an ancient Egyptian god. "Oisri" is a variant of the word "oyster". The Gavs apparently named it so because it seemed to contain a secret, a metaphorical pearl. There is no Egyptian connection.

As regards the current situation, I think it's high time for several people to deploy their helmets.

_________________Armed with my right and left bear arms and the Coat of Arms.

When I make a typo in MS Word, I've usually noticed it myself and my fingers will be most of the way over to the backspace key before it even highlights. So typically I end up fixing it at the same moment it fixes itself.

In this specific case it was actually me misremembering the name. I know because I typed that post on a computer and it doesn't autocorrect here. But things like that are why I disabled autocorrect on my phone.

In this specific case it was actually me misremembering the name. I know because I typed that post on a computer and it doesn't autocorrect here. But things like that are why I disabled autocorrect on my phone.

Oh, lordy, I've done that. It's especially difficult here, where there are alien names that I can never remember (like Oisri, or Kreelies); and alien names I can remember, but can't spell, like Fesherl-gani ... F'shrel-ganny? Fish-haul-Granny?

_________________I used to be Junius Gallio, until I messed up retyping my password in the Great Password Reset. Nice to be back.

The contract was for assisting Urtheep, and due to the breaches of regulation the Daggermother was able to pull the kill fee for the contract. At that point Karl sending the dossier was for free, and any court would agree that's no fee there claimable other than the termination fee.

However THEN the Daggermother asked for further assistance, and that was provided. Requesting THAT assistance is a request of services. Past consideration cannot be used for future contacts, and the Daggermother KNOWS the Toughs are mercenaries and Urtheep have employed them in the past (ie just now). Thus it is only understandable that new requests of services would involve at the minimum a token fee and likely a lot more.

Oh, lordy, I've done that. It's especially difficult here, where there are alien names that I can never remember (like Oisri, or Kreelies); and alien names I can remember, but can't spell, like Fesherl-gani ... F'shrel-ganny? Fish-haul-Granny?

Allow me to introduce you to the Ovalkwiki. It is a place where these and many other (buy not quite all) names are written down.